Croydon’s Food Flagship Programme

Food Flagship reaps bumper crop of health benefits

The Mayor of London’s food adviser, Rosie Boycott, has hailed Croydon’s Food Flagship programme a success for helping the borough’s schools, residents and businesses tackle the obesity epidemic and eat more nutritious meals. Read more about the achievements of the programme and the flagship’s legacy plans.

Pop-up Healthy Food Zone

A pop-up healthy food zone, run by budding local entrepreneurs opened outside Croydon College in early 2017. The Food Flagship programme arranged for the business owners to receive free training from the Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency (GCDA), which has expertise in the areas of health and sustainability. The course, specifically set up for healthy food businesses, covered the fundamental elements of running a food business, including financial planning, sourcing produce, and managing food production, as well as marketing the business.

The first food and drink outlets trading at the pop-up food zone include Joe+Santini Coffee, Brown Shuga Dumplin, Chilli Station, Eat Me Baking and VietVan - owned by supermodel Kate Moss’ brother Nick and his partner. Other businesses are set to join the food zone in the coming months.

What's on your plate?

Have you seen the new interactive Eatwell Guide? It shows how much of what you eat overall should come from each food group. You can use it to help you achieve a healthy, balanced diet. You don't need to achieve this with every meal but try to get the balance right over a day or even a week.

Good food links Croydon with towns and cities nationwide

Croydon is part of a pioneering national food network that shares innovation and best practice to limit the rise of preventable health problems. The Sustainable Food Cities Network seeks solutions to issues including obesity, diet-related ill health, food poverty and waste, climate change and biodiversity loss, and declining prosperity. Croydon’s role at the Network is an opportunity to improve the nation’s relationship with healthy foods and to help address some of the social and economic issues that can lead to poor health outcomes. Find out about how good food links borough with towns and cities nationwide.